Review – I Ain’t Been Shot Mum: Battle for Liberation

Rating:

Battle for Liberation is a supplement for the I Ain’t Been Shot Mum (IABSM) 3rd Edition World War II Company Level rules from Too Fat Lardies.

It covers the World War 2 Western Front from 1943 – 45, from the invasion of Sicily to the final battles in the heart of Germany, and gives generic unit orders of battle for the five major powers involved: British & Commonwealth, United States, French, German and Italian.

For each of these forces, the book gives a brief overview of their role in the conflict, and then lists several different generic orders of battle for a rifle company, reconnaissance troop, tank company, armoured infantry company, parachute company and any specialist units. These orders of battle include the standard company core forces, then options for battalion, regimental and divisional support assets.

These OOBs are laid out in a series of boxes which make it very easy to identify and allocate either random or specific units when generating forces for scenarios.
Following the orders of battle, there is a section on rating your forces, including notes on morale, actions and creating game decks involving that force. There is then a comprehensive list of stats for armoured vehicles and anti-tank weapons. Finally, there are details of special rules that are used for infantry weapons teams and the odd special vehicle and weapon.

This format is followed for all the major powers.

There are also three appendices, covering air support, supply in airborne operations and finally the use of smoke by the 2” mortar teams in the British Army.
This supplement represents a more comprehensive detailing of units, armour and forces in general than the previous publications, and as such are pretty much essential to the players of IABSM.

Each handbook is theatre and time specific, so you may only require the ones that cover your specific interest – but if each is dealt with in the same many as this first one, then I can only recommend that each will be incredibly useful – not only for IABSM, but potentially for other systems as well.

The fact that this handbook is only available as a 99 page full colour PDF, rather than in print, may preclude some people from owning it, but the undoubted flexibility of this format far outweighs its potential drawbacks.

Battle of Liberation is an excellent resource, not only for IABSM, but generally for any World War II ruleset.

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